“I am the greatest, I said that even before I knew I was.” – Muhammad Ali

If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a million times. Fake it til you make it.

On the surface, it seems like very strange advice. In a crowded world where everyone is vying for your attention, you want to put trust in the people who know what they are doing.

I’ll let you in on a little secret. No one has all the answers. There is no path you can take towards success. You can follow the advice of the top experts all you want, but what most of them don’t tell you is the path to success is not linear.

The path towards success is a winding road filled with twists and turns. There are obstacles all along the way trying to prevent you from reaching your goals.

The best way to overcome these obstacles is by having the willingness to experiment and fail. Just because a strategy worked for one person doesn’t mean it will work for you. Yes, there are principles you can use that have a greater chance of succeeding, but nothing is guaranteed. That is why you MUST be willing to fail.

When an idea fails, it doesn’t mean you are a failure. The problem many people have is letting failures become a part of them. The way to overcome this is by acknowledging the failure, learning from it, and moving on. Wallowing in self-pity will not get you anywhere. Pick yourself up and move on to the next thing.

Every master started off as an amateur. They learned starting from the ground up just like everyone else. But, at a certain point, they realized they were no longer the newbie. In order to get to this place, they had to have the confidence to trudge along and learn from their mistakes. Without that confidence, they wouldn’t have grown.

None of us has all the answers. We are all born amateurs, but if you exude confidence and are willing to learn on the fly, you can become the greatest.